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Description

Join Paul Sweeney for a tour of Glasgow's last great Victorian park, and its extraordinary buildings, like the Winter Gardens, that echo the area's rise and fall as the heart of the British Empire's locomotive building industry.

In Springburn Park there stands, like a Roman Emperor, the statue of James Reid, owner of Springburn’s Hyde Park Locomotive Works, which as part of the North British Locomotive Company grew to become the largest manufacturer of locomotives in the world during the early 20th century. From the highest point in Glasgow, he looks down on a district that was once his empire. Springburn Public Park was opened by Glasgow Corporation in 1892 and was the last Victorian park to be developed in the city. The following year Reid gifted to it a bandstand, constructed by MacFarlane's Saracen Foundry in Possilpark. Reid's statue was erected in the park by public subscription in 1903. James' son Hugh left an even bigger mark on Springburn, and especially its fine park. He purchased the house and grounds of Mosesfield in 1904, and donated these to the park. In Mosesfield House in 1896 George Johnston had created the prototype of the Arrol-Johnston motor car, and laid the foundation of the Scottish automotive industry. Other features in the park bequeathed by this eminent family of locomotive manufacturers are the Doulton Unicorn Column and of course the once magnificent Winter Gardens, the largest glasshouse in Scotland; donated by Sir Hugh Reid in 1900. Although now derelict, a popular campaign has been launched to restore the A-listed building to its former glory. Despite suffering a severe decline with the collapse of locomotive manufacturing in the 1960s, Springburn’s park still stands as a poignant monument to ‘Locomotive City, a once prosperous and industrious district of Glasgow.